print May 1997

Martino Coppes

Martino Coppes creates evocative, landscapelike images by making peculiar assemblages out of discarded bits of white plastic and then carefully photographing them. Suggesting the aftermath of a natural or atomic disaster, these strangely lit pseudo-landscapes, which often incorporate tiny figures, are both synthetic and organic, simultaneously conveying a sense of stasis and continuous, subtle metamorphosis.

Although his photographs are strangely seductive, Coppes doesn’t look for beauty in the bits of discarded plastic he uses; rather, he seems primarily concerned with finding out how completely

print January 1997

Jean-Frédéric Schnyder

Jean-Frédéric Schnyder’s recent exhibition “I pittori somo cani” (Painters are dogs) included over one hundred, identically sized paintings in an array of styles, exploring seemingly exhausted genres: landscape, still life, portraiture, and abstraction. Schnyder arranged all his paintings, which he produced between 1983 and 1995, on a single wall in orderly, horizontal bands, creating a patchwork of miscellaneous styles and themes. On the gallery floor he placed a work entitled Hudel (Rag, 1983–), a carpet-like expanse formed out of used, meticulously-stitched-together painting rags. An ongoing

print April 1996

Richard Wilson

In this recent exhibition Richard Wilson chose to present only two works. Entitled Corner and Cutting Corners (both 1995), these were objects that he had dramatically altered and then wedged into corners of the gallery’s two rooms, leaving much of the space empty. Corner, installed in the larger room, was created by cutting off a triangular section of an Italian version of a Fußball table along the line of an imaginary corner kick, while Cutting Corners consisted of two metal file cabinets that had been cut up and reassembled—a slice having been removed from one and added to the other—so that

print October 1995

Not Vital

With work that is simultaneously abstract and representational, mature and childlike, Not Vital mines the depths of our collective unconscious. Though initially his most recent pieces might seem to sit squarely within the Minimalist tradition, they have a personal, often sexual inflection. In his most recent exhibition it became clear that for Vital the process of making art is governed by the search for a primary, universal level of experience and identity. Upon entering the gallery we were presented with the artist’s name in 14 different languages—from Arabic to Wallachian—painted on the wall.

print May 1995

Umberto Cavenago

For years Umberto Cavenago has been imitating the mechanical and the industrial with his galvanized-steel, Minimalist forms on wheels. In this way, Cavenago creates artwork that is uncomfortable, unstable, and functionless in its surroundings.

For this current exhibition that shares its title, “A prova di scemo” (Fool’s proof) with the body of work presented here, Cavenago designed and produced 13 pairs of solid cor-ten (corrosion resistance-tensile strength) steel simulacra of roller skates. In addition to these finished objects, the exhibition included prototypes for the skates in terra-cotta

print March 1995

Marco Gastini

Marco Gastini’s works reflect the kind of fascination with nontraditional materials that has become synonymous with arte povera—the Italian art of his generation. Such a statement is meaningless, however, unless the question of why those materials became signifiers for an entire generation is considered. In contrast to postwar American artists who constructed a language of freedom through an innovative use of traditional materials, many Italian artists—both those who were part of arte povera and those more indirectly influenced by it—adopted “poor” materials in order to free themselves from the

print February 1995

Chiara Dynys

For nearly a decade Chiara Dynys has been constructing framelike, geometric forms that open out from the wall in a kind of failed trompe l’oeil. What might initially read as an exercise in the perfection of an inherited Minimalist grammar is actually an attempt to erase distinctions between different materials such as marble, “marmorino” (its painted equivalent), and wax combined with marble dust. Unlike that of her Minimalist forefathers, Dynys’ work aggressively attempts to retain and express a visual tradition through both history and place. Dynys claims this notion of place not only through

print November 1994

Mario Airò/Christian Philipp Müller

For this exhibition both Mario Airò, and Christian Philipp Müller appropriated modes of architecture that speak directly to notions of perfection. While Airò, chose to represent the monastic living quarters of the nearby Certosa di Pavia, located just south of Milan, in the gallery, Müller’s activity was based on this city’s wholesale showrooms, but the two distinctly different installations worked together to create a discourse that quickly moved beyond the obvious dichotomies to attempt to analyze the gallery’s role in conferring both spiritual and monetary value.

Both Airò and Muller manipulated

print October 1994

Luca Vitone

In the summer of 1993, Luca Vitone acquired ad space in various art magazines to create a work entitled Il Luogo dell’ Arte (The place of art, 1991-92). These simply designed ads consisted of Vitone’s name followed by the title of his project, and a text that read: “The floor plan 1:10 shows the space of an art gallery. Art is a place, the gallery measures its value,” and a rather prestigious, international list of galleries. Vitone then collected the floor plans of the galleries listed and produced drawings of each of the spaces to scale, which he then reproduced as a book and then installed

print Summer 1994

Alessandro Pessoli

Alessandro Pessoli’s work is dominated by satirical images that are often sadistic, grotesque, and adolescent in their ability to induce nervous laughter. Pessoli has always given titles to his exhibitions which attempt to create a context for his often diverse works. His 1993 show “Maelstrom” consisted of the installation of some 1,900 drawings that served as a tempestuous diary of political, economic, and ideological breakdown.

The title of Pessoli’s recent exhibition, “In Marcia” (On the march), immediately brought to mind fears of enforced discipline associated with the recent resurgence of

print October 1992

Monsieur Tête

Presented in the center of the gallery this roomlike structure represents the collaborative effort of four artists: Piero Almeoni, Manuela Cirino, Maurizio Donzelli, and Roberto Marossi. For this singular work entitled Monsieur Tête, 1992, each of the four artists contributed one element that, when brought together, function individually like a wall flooring , or a column. The four artists have not exactly made one work together, it is, rather, one work composed of distinct individually authored parts. This spatial arrangement creates an ambiguous condition about the exact nature of the whole

print December 1991

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ works function well when the viewer is aware that they involve an implied invitation to participate; here, without explicit instructions, however, few viewers left the gallery sucking on candy or carrying off the sheets of paper, as the artist intended. A small C-print puzzle, Untitled (Lover’s Letter) (all works 1991), presents a fragmented manuscript from Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. The cropped text, in which Salomé describes the beauty of John the Baptist’s body, hair, mouth, and voice, is taken from her final declaration of love before his severed head. In this work,

Anthony Iannacci